


The Last Time (For a Long, Long Time)

by MaudlinScientist



Category: Better Call Saul (TV)
Genre: F/M, Oneshot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:29:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27018091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaudlinScientist/pseuds/MaudlinScientist
Summary: After  Jimmy learns that he will not be hired by HHM, Kim shows up at his place.
Relationships: Jimmy McGill | Saul Goodman/Kim Wexler
Comments: 6
Kudos: 29





	The Last Time (For a Long, Long Time)

Jimmy waited so long to answer his door, after Kim knocked, that she thought he might be doing the pretend-not-to-be-home thing, his extremely recognizable car in the parking lot notwithstanding. But then the door opened, revealing Jimmy standing there with his work shirt untucked and unbuttoned and his face…

Why, when he was sad, did he have to look so sad? It made Kim’s chest ache.

When she had moved past him into the apartment, Jimmy closed the door and leaned back against it. “You’ve heard, I assume?”

She pressed her lips together and nodded.

“Be honest with me—did you think I was going to get the job?”

She almost said yes. But he had asked for honesty, and _honestly_ she had never been one hundred percent certain. She knew that HMM would ordinarily never, ever hire an associate with a degree from the University of American Samoa, no matter that the school was accredited, no matter that he had passed the bar, no matter that in every way that mattered he was at least as smart as any of the first-year associates Kim had started with. But she had been hoping that he’d get special consideration as a current employee of the firm, and also that maybe for once nepotism would work for someone she liked.

But she hadn’t been certain. So instead of saying yes she said, “I thought you _deserved_ it.”

“Huh.”

Suddenly uncomfortable, Kim shifted her gaze from Jimmy’s face to the shabby little kitchen around them. She had known Jimmy for over a year before she saw the inside of this apartment, and she’d gotten the sense it was because he was ashamed of it. Which was stupid—they’d had the exact same job with the same wage, why would she judge him because he couldn’t afford a cushier place? In fact, she’d always appreciated that he’d made the tradeoff to live somewhere a little less nice but without a roommate; Kim had never had a roommate she didn’t end up hating at least a little.

“So…” she said, “are you gonna stick around the mailroom to see if a spot opens up or—”

“No.” He snapped it so sharply she almost jumped. “I’m not gonna ‘stick around the mailroom.’ I’m a lawyer now, Kim.”

“I know that.” Too late, it really struck her how that must have sounded to Jimmy. How would _she_ have reacted if someone had expected her to keep delivering mail after she’d passed the bar? She had to come up with something else to say, to make the sick feeling in her stomach go away. “Well, you know what, maybe you should have your own practice. You told me once you used to want to start your own business.”

“I told you that?”

“… Yeah.” They had been sitting on Kim’s fire escape, dangling their feet over the edge—like nine-year-olds—and drinking too much—like nineteen-year-olds. His voice an odd mix of bitter and wistful, Jimmy had told her about his parents’ store, and about the brief period before he dropped out of college when he’d planned to open a business, some place he could run without making his father’s mistakes. 

Jimmy nodded. “Law office of James M. McGill, Esquire.” He laughed, then, a short, sarcastic chuckle. “I’m sure that’ll go great.”

“Jimmy.” She hated it when he got self-pitying, when his usual manic optimism curdled and turned acidic.

He closed his eyes. “My own practice. Thanks for the suggestion, Kim. I’ll think about it.” The sarcasm was gone now, though she wondered how hard he had to try to suppress it.

She didn’t know what else to say. She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know what to say. So she closed the space between them and put her hands on his waist and kissed him.

He seemed to hesitate for a moment before kissing her back, but then put his hands behind her and pulled her in so that her back bowed. She pushed her hands up beneath his undershirt, touching his skin, hooked her fingers over the top of his pants and pulled him backwards, out of the crappy kitchen and to the bed. But when she fell backwards onto the bedspread he didn’t follow her, remaining standing at the foot of the bed instead.

So that was how he was gonna be? In that case… She sat up and tugged at his belt, looked up at with an eyebrow crooked suggestively.

He pressed a hand to his forehead, closing his eyes. “Kim, I…

“What?”

He sighed. “How about, just—raincheck for next time you feel sorry for me, okay?”

She recoiled instinctively, drawing her hands back. “That’s not…”

“It’s fine,” he said. And he was trying to sound all reasonable and calm but he clearly couldn’t help bitterness from creeping into his voice as he said, “I just don’t need your pity. Not this time.”

 _Why did you open your door then?_ But her throat was frozen cold, and the words stuck there, choking her.

She stood up and moved past him to the door, paused with her hand on the knob. And maybe her throat wasn’t so frozen after all. “Jimmy, if we slept together every time I felt sorry for you, we’d do it a lot more often.”

She made it to the front seat of her car before she started to cry. She sat there with her fists clenched in her lap, with her entire body clenched against whatever rebel part of it produced tears. How stupid, how _stupid_ to cry because… because of what, even? Because Jimmy should be angry at other people, at Those Assholes, not her. Because (and she was a little ashamed to admit this part to herself) he had violated an unspoken rule between the two of them—that he always, always wanted her, that she got to decide _when_.

What she should have said is there’s a difference between feeling sorry for someone and feeling _with_ them. She felt sorry for lots of people—people on the news, people she saw in the courthouse standing around waiting for their trials and looking lost. She felt _with_ almost nobody, nobody except…

What did he want anyway? To “go steady”, to see each other every night, to sleep in the same bed, to say nice warm things to each other? Because the thing about that, the thing about that…

The thing about feeling _with_ someone is when they’re happy you feel it in your own chest, warmth like a lake in summer, light like the morning sun. But then what if they’re _not_ happy? What if they _won’t_ be?

The thing about feeling with someone is then you have twice as much skin to bruise. And here was Jimmy McGill stumbling through the world and finding every hard edge of it. And then, when Kim felt his pain, somehow that made _her_ wrong?

The tears seemed to be finished, finally, though Kim’s eyes were still warm and tender, as if acid-burned.

No more. She felt the decision inside herself, like an iron cage closing around some soft inner part. No more occasional kissing. No more sticky, drunken secret-sharing. And she was never going to cry over Jimmy McGill—not ever again.


End file.
